


sciamchy.

by izzyharel



Series: a compendium of what j.k rowling never said. [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Albus Dumbledore Bashing, Book 6: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Canon Compliant, One Shot Collection, POV Draco Malfoy, Redeemed Draco Malfoy, Second War with Voldemort, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 14:21:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29172546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/izzyharel/pseuds/izzyharel
Summary: The odd thing about being eleven years old was that you said stupid shit. Draco couldn’t remember what he had said that made Harry hate him so much. What he could remember was the fact Harry Potter hated him. So Malfoy hated him in turn. He was the villain of Harry’s story, but nobody stopped to consider that Harry was the villain in Draco’s own life.・sciamchy: argument or conflict with an imaginary opponent.
Relationships: Albus Dumbledore & Draco Malfoy, Albus Dumbledore & Harry Potter, Albus Dumbledore & Severus Snape, Astoria Greengrass/Draco Malfoy, Draco Malfoy & Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy & Lucius Malfoy & Narcissa Black Malfoy, Draco Malfoy & Pansy Parkinson & Blaise Zabini, Draco Malfoy & Ron Weasley, Draco Malfoy & Severus Snape, Draco Malfoy & Voldemort, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Lucius Malfoy/Narcissa Black Malfoy
Series: a compendium of what j.k rowling never said. [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2141601
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	sciamchy.

It wasn’t as if Draco actually wanted to hate Harry Potter. It was more the principle of it all, really. He wasn’t used to being denied things. At the ripe old age of eleven, he hadn’t known the idea of being denied anything. Sure, Draco had heard that people sometimes had parents who didn’t dote on them and that people sometimes disliked other people. But that all felt distant and primitive. He was Draco Malfoy, his mother’s beloved son and his father’s heir. If he wanted the world on a string, his parents would give it to him with smiles on their faces. Draco had never wanted for anything. And why would he? 

It was unfathomable to be told no and shoved away by a twig of a child when he offered friendship. With himself! It was a prized commodity, being Draco’s friend. He was rich, powerful, admittedly slightly conceited, but still a good friend. Draco figured that much, considering the fact Crabbe and Goyle liked him well enough. The person who didn’t like him was Harry Potter.

Draco knew who Harry Potter was. Hell, anyone with the ability to use their eyes and ears knew who Harry Potter was. The stories of who he was varied. To Draco’s parents, he was a fluke; a fallacy in a great plan that had somehow been ruined by a little boy and the power of ‘love’ or whatever other blithe excuses common people made to try and deflect the fact that a literal child had somehow taken down a Dark Wizard. The Dark Wizard, actually. Draco had been tasked to try and befriend him. This boy, this paragon of power, the one with the power to vanquish a man so warped and twisted with dark magic that Draco’s parents only spoke of him in whispers even after his death, he was to be Draco’s friend. He surely possessed some dark magic of his own that was not banal and mundane. That could be weaponized. Eleven was a malleable age. 

Draco, held aloft by the heady promises of being mature for his age, had slunk into Harry’s compartment in the train with the lofty assurance that the two had met already and that his winning personality had already garnered an alliance with the Boy Who Lived. Only to see a Weasley there and to hear mirthful idiocy come from Harry’s lips. If there was something special about him that had prevented his death, Draco seriously doubted it was anything outside idiocy that made even a killing curse impossible. His head was far too thick for killing curses, the little git.

So Draco had snapped back. He had chosen violence and hatred to counter the unknown thing that was someone not liking him. Someone he had chosen to be his friend had denied that. Harry was a Gryffindor and rose to the bait and Draco retaliated in turn. They were eleven. He was happy to make jokes at the expense of two little Gryffindors. And then a third, when the bushy-haired mudblood joined their ranks. He was gleeful with the promise of living away from his parents, gleeful to pick his own choices and friends. And enemies.

But at some point, the allure of having an enemy began to falter. It might have been around his fifth year, that. His fourth year had been coloured by jealousy. Harry was always winning and somehow found a way to hate Draco, even as his power and prestige grew. He had saved Hogwarts and then he had won a prize after watching a friend die. And yet, somehow, found the time to hate Draco.

Draco was, in all actuality, quite sick of being known only for being Harry Potter’s rival. 

The thing with Slytherins and with Malfoys, in general, was that they knew how to pick and choose their fights. Narcissa had chosen to lie to save her son, Lucius had chosen to put the diary in Ginny Weasley’s cauldron, Draco had chosen to falter on the precipice of committing murder; had chosen to lie about knowing who Harry Potter was when snatchers called them to the Malfoy Manor and then tortured Hermione for the crime of being born wrong. Draco knew how to pick his fights. Harry was a losing one. He had tried to pull away then. To mind his business and distract himself with Pansy, to focus on his life and the fact that outside Harry Potter, there was still a childlike glee he could find in Hogwarts. 

This was a place untouched by the death and destruction of his world. In their haste to condemn death eaters, wizards forgot their children. They forgot little Draco Malfoy, presented his first racing broom by his laughing father. They forgot little Theodore Nott crying over his mother’s death and having his father’s hand firmly wrap around him for comfort. The children of these accused and condemned did not forget. They closed ranks and tried to hold onto Hogwarts; to the illusionary comfort offered in its halls. Who cared for Harry Potter? The Dark Lord was back. Draco couldn’t be arsed to care. And yet, every time he saw Harry, he saw the same twig of a boy who had defied him. He saw the same defiance in Harry’s eyes.

And he had to wonder, “why the fuck can’t I get a break from this?” But his mouth worked faster than his mind and whenever Draco saw Harry with that look in his eye, he retaliated. But come sixth year, Draco wanted nothing to do with Harry. The curse of having a death-eater parent had caught up to him, burned into his arm and into his wand hand. Draco had practised the killing curse on little animals but couldn’t do it. He tried to poison Dumbledore and tried to kill him, but he couldn’t do it. He was a coward and a weakling. His father would suffer for it and so too would his mother. Harry Potter did whatever he could to save his family, found as his family was. Draco tried to do the same.

But while Harry had friends to support him in his quest, Draco had Harry’s incessant meddling in the most frightening of times. Every time that Harry goaded him, something inside Draco snapped even more. Like the snake heraldry of his house, something tightened and squeezed inside his stomach; serpentine and repulsive. Draco hated him. He hated Harry for not leaving him alone. He loathed Harry for having friends and having the support of everyone, not just Snape and self-serving death eaters like Aunt Bella. And then he almost died for that hatred, bleeding out in a bathroom where he had finally thought to find some respite from his turbulent thoughts. It was only after Harry attacked him so brutally that Draco finally got it.

Harry, the golden boy who had denied Draco’s friendship and had played the wronged victim whenever they fought, was just as twisted as Draco. He just was better at hiding it and being validated for it. When Draco stood on that tower, prepared to strike down one of the fools who had helped Harry and given him love instead of hatred, he couldn’t. Draco’s rage instead turned into sorrow for the life he might have had. In Dumbledore, there was one final reminder of his formative years and the few fond memories Draco had at the castle. He would have lingered there all night, holding onto that wand and sniffling. 

And then Dumbledore fell and every single one of Draco’s final failsafes and illusions cracked around him like fragments of glass. There was nobody to save him as they had saved Harry. Draco had to save his family. With the dark mark burned upon his arm, he was led away from the body of a man who had tried to offer him kindness when Draco did not want it. Had he stopped to think about it, Draco would have realised the twisting feeling in his stomach was guilt. 

Guilt and anguish were his only companions. His father was back but his mother was a wraith. He was expected to fight at the tender age of seventeen. The boy of twelve who had bought a fancy broom only to spite the Gryffindors and Harry was gone; so was the boy of fourteen who had made pins and laughed off his jealousy. There was a hollow shell of a boy. How primitive it seemed to think of Harry and all the jokes made at his expense. How primitive everything felt. He was a spectre; another ghost in Voldemort’s armada of lost souls and those who had only lived with hatred.

And Draco did not like that. He did not like being a villain. He did not like seeing his father’s gaunt face and his mother’s tired eyes. All he wanted was to be seventeen and to go to school, to cling onto his broomstick and look at the Quidditch Pitch once more or to sit in the common room. All he wanted was to be something more than an unnamed child warrior shuttled off to war for a cause he did not even truly believe in.

So maybe that was why he did not rat Harry out at Malfoy Manor. Maybe that was why he nodded to Harry at the train station when they carted their children away years later. He was not somebody’s villain. Harry was not his villain. They were both teenagers. In another world, they might have made up over butterbeer at a school reunion years in the future and laughed over boyhood feuds. But they had not been given that world. So instead, a simple nod and words not spoken were all that was needed. Neither boy was a villain in the end. 

When the dust cleared and the war ended, Draco Malfoy; former death eater and former seventh year Slytherin did not bother to snap back when Harry Potter looked at him. He did not bother to jeer at Weasley and Granger, who were dazed in the wreckage. Just as he had done all those years ago, he extended a hand to Harry like they were eleven once more and trying to introduce themselves. When Harry took his hand, Draco realised for the first time just how odd it felt to finally be introduced to the boy who had also been fighting tooth and nail for his family and for his future for real. And he couldn’t say that he hated that odd feeling. 

If he had allowed himself to ruminate on it, Draco might have called that feeling triumph; might have figured that it was a feeling that heroes often felt.


End file.
